This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

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Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Evaluating Nature's 2009 "15 Evolutionary Gems" Darwin-Evangelism Kit

Here's something worth knowing if you don't want your kids spending a lot of time on Darwin worship when they could be learning something useful:

Last year, during the bicentennial anniversary of Darwin's birth, Nature released a free online packet titled "15 Evolutionary Gems." Its subtitle was "A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection." It might have been better subtitled 'A evangelism packet for those wishing to spread the good news about Darwinism.' After all, when Nature announced the packet, they said they were heeding a prior call which "urged scientists and their institutions to 'spread the word'" about evolution and "highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact." The packet is to be used not just in schools, but also in home evangelism or relationship evangelism.

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The packet is simply an extension of Nature's "campaign" for Darwin. But it is quite useful in one important respect: the packet is from the world's top scientific journal and purports to show us "just what is the evidence for evolution by natural selection." So if the evidence isn't very strong, then that should tell you something.

As we'll see, far from being "incontrovertible," most of the "evolutionary gems" in the packet do not show any significant amount of evolution and might be best views as "microevolutionary" gems. A couple of the "gems" have little to do with evolution, but an evolutionary interpretation is added in after-the-fact.

Right now, Darwinism is right up there with "recovered memories" in believability, which is the main reason I would want it minimized in tax-funded schools. Maybe my local used car salesman can spout it, along with extolling the glories of the used Lada he is trying to unload before it falls to pieces on the sales lot.